


the moon’s promises

by betony



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Bodyswap, F/M, Mid-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21759958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: The Queen of Attolia comes to understand the Thief of Eddis somewhat better than before.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides
Comments: 10
Kudos: 111
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	the moon’s promises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [partypaprika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/gifts).



> Title taken from The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. Set roughly halfway through that book. Happy Yuletide; I hope you enjoy this!

_They say in those days Moira still descended to Earth to speak with mortal men, and among those so favored was the Thief of Eddis. She strode upon feet that had never touched the ground, and stood above his bed. She laid her hand upon his cheek, and whispered a blessing into his hair._

_The Thief opened one bloodshot eye. “What do_ you _want?” he grumbled._

 _“The question is,” Moira corrected him, “what do_ you _desire, little thief? Once it was nothing more than to understand Attolia, no matter how many visits it took. Now you despair of returning.”_

_“I’ve been informed it would be unwise. Particularly when the Attolians want nothing so much as my head on a pike.”_

_“And if,” urged Moira, “there was a way to evade them? To understand Attolia as never before, and she you?”_

_Eugenides was silent for a long moment before rasping, “You know my answer.”_

_She did. She laughed and took up a pair of yellow citrine earrings lying nearby, waiting to be dedicated past recovery, and threw them up in the air. “Do not offend the gods,” she warned, and was gone by the time they clattered against the floor._

* * *

The queen of Attolia wakes to several disconcerting discoveries, each hard on the heels of the last. First, there is a fearsome crick in her neck. Second, this is due to the fact that she seems to have fallen asleep, not in her fine carved bed, but rather in a shabby armchair sure to have known better days. Third, this is due in turn to the fact that she is, at present, not in her own bedchamber, or her own palace, or even her own body. 

She does not jump to her feet. Attolia has learned not to betray terror so, and besides she cannot be certain of keeping her balance in this unfamiliar and unreliable body. It is tall and lanky, the thighs and knees she sees before her sun-darkened brown, and with shaking fingers she reaches up to trace the feather-shaped scar she knows she will find on his--her--cheek. 

It seems the Thief of Eddis has discovered a new way to torment her. 

Attolia remains very still. She knows she cannot remain here. Eventually someone will come searching for the Thief. She hopes they will not demand to know the location of stolen goods. She cannot hope to know where the Thief might store his treasures. She must get up. She does.

It is as unpleasant as she expected. The Thief’s body is not built for Attolia’s careful control, and her legs and hips move in new and awkward ways; she is reminded forcibly of the Shadow Princess’ ungainly adolescence. She spreads her arms wide in hopes of maintaining some dignity, and stops short. Somewhere the Thief, if not all the gods, must laugh as Attolia looks at the stump of the right hand she ordered cut off herself and wants to retch.

“Gen.” Even after all these years, Attolia remembers Eddis’ voice. The queen stands in the doorway of this room, this library, looking quizzically at her Thief. Attolia’s stomach burns first hot, then cold. She wishes she knew what business Eddis had here.

“Your father said I might find you here,” says the queen. “He’s worried about you. We all are.”

Attolia stares at the altar tucked in a corner of the room, because the alternative is meeting Eddis’ gaze. A pair of citrine earrings rest there; sanctified and noticeably ugly. Better they be bestowed upon the gods than to her, if so the Thief had ever intended. 

Eddis still awaits an answer.

“Oh.” What does one say to words such as these? Attolia has never had anyone to be concerned for her, anyone to concern her. “Are they.”

Eddis bustles into the room, but does not seem surprised by her sour tone. Is it habitual for the Thief to respond so to her, just as Attolia might? Attolia knows little of the ways of lovers, and would not have even if her husband had survived past his wedding feast, but--if it were her--she would have expected more affection, more intimacy. She does not know why she questions this; it will never be her, after all. 

“You must stop sulking,” Eddis says, and puts hands firmly on Attolia’s--the Thief’s--shoulders. “Or at least not shut up in here like a tomb. Don’t let me hear of you crawling back until sundown at the earliest.” She gives Attolia an ungentle push. “Enough now. Go.”

The citrines glint from their corner. Attolia, seeing that there is very little choice left to her, _goes._

* * *

It’s only later that she realizes that she had been left unattended in a library that must have house decades of Eddisian war plans, economic accounts, even laundry lists from the household. How Relius would despair of her if only he knew: years of lessons wasted. By then she finds herself in the stables, by a combination of luck and shrewd guesswork. She can think of nowhere else to present herself when told to leave the palace. The Thief, however, must do no such thing; the grooms gape when asked for a horse, and some of the younger and ruder stablehands snicker. 

One imperious look on Irene’s part silences them--for an instant, at least, before they start chuckling once again. Clearly the Thief does not stand on dignity in his own house. She mounts the roan mare they provide with her usual ease, apparently another unusual occurrence, and then the first minor disaster happens: she grasps for the reins and realizes she has only one hand with which to grip. In truth she doesn’t require more than a single hand, but the shock of it sends her silent again. 

The grooms cluck in sympathy, and Irene raises her head. They might not pity her, but no more will she have them pity the Thief, who is not here to defend himself. She presses her heels into the flanks of the roan mare, and races off into the countryside, utterly unaccompanied.

She rides past mountain stream and meadow, half-expecting to see the guard chasing behind; but even when she reaches a lake that she recognizes from one of the maps made of her neighboring realm, she is alone. So much so that she dares tumble off the horse and approach the waters ahead.

In Attolia, to do so might mean her death. A single man or woman paid enough to hold her head underwater, a dash of poison added in advance--the Thief is free of all this. She wants to know what that might be like. She even dares strip off tunic and trousers one-handed, and plunge into the icy depths herself, paddling out with the desperation of one who does not know how to swim. The Thief’s body does, however; it remembers and rebels at her ineptitude. It will not allow her to drown, no matter how she tries. What he might think of his body’s betrayal, should he know, she dares not guess. She is too happy here in this moment, drifting aimlessly through the brackish water and staring up at the sky. She stays there until her fingertips wrinkle, and she does not allow herself to think anything at all.

Dressing once again is another struggle, but once more her body supplies the action. She supposes in all honesty she cannot think of the Thief as a mere boy any longer. Even a man, though, would be hard pressed to sacrifice the life he has here for a desperate mission in enemy territory. He must truly love his Queen to have acted as he did on that terrible night months ago; she hopes little Helen appreciates him as she should. 

True to her word, Irene does not return until nearly nightfall. 

Eddis is there, waiting. She is hunched in one of the shabby armchairs, frowning a little until Irene enters, and then she is surprised into a smile. “I didn’t think you would,” she says by way of greeting. “I was sure you’d only wait until I was wanted elsewhere, and then skulk back into your library.”

“As you can see,” Irene says for lack of anything else to fill the silence, “I did not.” As this was mostly because she did not in fact have the slightest notion how to navigate the winding hallways of the Eddisian palace, she doubted she deserved any of Eddis’ praise. 

“Did you enjoy yourself?”

Another question Irene cannot remember ever having been asked, and an inconsequential one. She answers as truthfully as she can. “As much as possible.” With faint horror, she realizes she has raised not one, but both arms up to punctuate her point. She can feel Eddis’ eyes upon her like a brand. 

How does, she thinks, Eugenides bear it?

She does not realize she is weeping until Eddis’ arms come around her, the Thief’s body, among its many failings, not having developed a resistance to shows of weakness as her own has. It is a sensation she knows only from nights hidden under the sheets in her bedchamber, aching with the memory of Eugenides’ cries in her dungeons. She finds she does not care for it any more now than she did then.

“Go to sleep,” Eddis whispers, before leaving her with a last caress, and Irene remembers idly that if she does not know how lovers behave around one another, she is just as ignorant of how mothers or sisters might comfort their own. “It’ll pass by morning.”

Irene Attolia knows it will. A day in another’s world is more of an indulgence than she deserves. Just to make sure, she snatches the earrings from the altar and folds herself into bed with them clutched in her hand. She does not dare wear them but she wonders, before sleep overtakes her, if their outlines will still be etched in the Thief’s palm when he wakes.

* * *

Phresine is there in the morning, hands patiently folded before her. “Good morning, Your Majesty,” she intones; Attolia, busy counting all ten white fingers, does not answer.

It is only later, when her attendants are dressing her, that she thinks to ask, “Yesterday. All went well yesterday?”

Chloe blinks and does not speak of a sudden sleeping fit, or unexplained malady, but of a queen quite hale and hearty. Attolia’s throat tightens, a thousand catastrophes coming to mind. She does not scream. She wants to.

She catches Phresine’s hand when the others turn to go and croaks, “Yesterday. What did I—“

She has no further words to explain herself. She needs none, under her oldest attendant’s knowing eye.

“Nothing, Your Majesty,” she says, very gently.

“Nothing?” Attolia repeats. Impossible. She strains her ears to hear instead _burned down the palace_ or _insulted the Mede_ or at least _burgled every last baron out of hearth and home_.

But Phresine shakes her head. “You dismissed your attendants, and your guards. You took up a great stone chair and laid it in the gardens, and sat in the sunlight.”

If she closes her eyes, Attolia can almost feel the sun’s warmth in her hair, the garden’s scents in her nose. She hasn’t allowed herself to walk there for far too long, not since that one distracted day with Dite. She has missed it.

“That’s all?” she asks, voice hoarse. “No more?”

“No, Your Majesty,” lies old Phresine. She has served the queen of Attolia for many years, after all. She knows what her young sad queen must hear and what she must not, and which of these an afternoon spent resolutely in the sun, far enough from any officials or state secrets must be. 

And even before Attolia dismisses her without another word, she knows never to speak of that moment at moonrise the night before, when the queen had raised the fingers of her right hand and pressed them to her lips.


End file.
